


Everything that I want, Chris/Karl, rpf, PG-13 (image heavy)

by blcwriter



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Embedded Images, Fluff, Headaches & Migraines, LiveJournal, M/M, Schmoop, fic import
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 18:10:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blcwriter/pseuds/blcwriter





	Everything that I want, Chris/Karl, rpf, PG-13 (image heavy)

Comment-fic inspired by this pic at Team Jones' Daily Captain. H/C, cuddling, MEGA-WHOA SCHMOOP. No sexxings at all. Sorry, [](http://withthepilot.livejournal.com/profile)[**withthepilot**](http://withthepilot.livejournal.com/) , I tried to give in to your mission, but it just didn't happen today.  Background Karl WTF-ry in New Zealand, because IDEK, I'm contemplating issues of infidelity in rpf and I don't know how I feel about them even as I love the idea of Karl and Chris so together.

Karl sees him coming, all turtled over, and _eh_ that's not good. Must have been a bad flight. From the opposite direction in which he's been walking, he can see Chris is hunched forward, his neck canted weirdly, his head kind of off to the side. That and the sunglasses.

"Chris! Chris!" the reporters are shouting, and he stops to answer their questions since of course that’s what they’re here to do. As Karl gets closer, he can see how Chris winces away from the flash of cameras, how he steps back and bit when someone's talking too loudly right in his ear and thinks—wonders—worries-- well, there’s time for that later. Karl answers his own questions from his side of the gauntlet, signs autographs and notes the stinging whiff of the Sharpie assaulting his nose, wonders—worries, because always he does with Christopher Pine, it’s his most recent preoccupation—how he’s doing on his side of the line. When he turns for a moment to see, Chris is answering some question, low, quiet, solemn.

His forehead’s incredibly wrinkled and he’s got at least four reporters to go. Karl can see from his pallor that the kid’s fighting back nausea from sheer force of will. He steps back from a reporter, pretending a call, and then nods as if he’s been told something important, then pulls Chris away.

“Sorry, folks,” he says, not sorry at all. “Just got a call from the boss man, we’re needed inside for some meeting, something got all moved around, I’m afraid I’m going to have to steal the Captain from you.”

It’s all a lie, and Chris knows, J.J.’s not in town ‘til tomorrow, but the press are all dumb and don’t pay attention to that kind of stuff in the moment, so they part like the Red Sea and Karl and Chris make their way into the hotel, where the desk clerk, at least, has the gods’-given sense to see Chris isn’t well and Karl’s jet-lagged to boot and had a prime view of the gauntlet outside to begin with. She checks them in in about two minutes flat, offers to send someone up with what bags haven’t already been sent on from the airport, but Karl doesn’t want the accompaniment of a bellhop.

“No, sweetheart, we’re fine, thank you,” he says, with a smile, and she apologizes all over again for the press clamor outside.

“Nothing you can help,” Chris says, his teeth gritted. “One bellhop gets word and posts it on Twitter or Gawker, we’re all fucking doomed. We know you guys do what you can.” He’s still got his sunglasses on in the soft golden light of the lobby, never a good sign in Karl’s book. His smile at the desk clerk is pained, barely a grimace. He palms his cardkey and heads off to the lift without further word. Karl gives the girl one more smile, pockets his own key and follows, watching the way Chris seems to turtle even more into himself now that there aren’t photographers lurking.

They enter the lift and it’s empty, so as soon as the door closes, Karl doesn’t bother to restrain himself from resting a hand on the back of Chris’ neck. If some security git’s watching, it’ll just look friendly—he hopes.

Chris practically flinches, so even that touch is too much.

“That bad, hunh?”

Chris presses his mouth in a line, shaking his head just barely as “yes.” Karl removes his hand gently, not saying a word as they get to Chris’ floor. His hand’s shaking as he puts the card in its slot, waits for the light, removes it, and Karl pushes it open, takes Chris’ bag as Chris just goes in and carefully—carefully- climbs on the bed, because it would hurt too fucking much to flop down.

Karl doesn’t turn on the lights, and he takes Chris’ duffel into the bathroom, closing the door so he can turn on the lights and rummage through so he can find what he needs. He finds the plastic-wrapped packet, tears it open, makes sure the needle’s intact, then runs the hot water and heats up a side towel and runs it under the water until the bathroom mirror’s starting to steam. When the thing’s thoroughly wet, he twists it and turns off the light, exits into the room.

Chris hasn’t moved, his feet still hanging off the edge of the bed.

“Here,” he says, pushing at him until he’s fully up on the bed, not hanging over. He can worry about other things once the meds hit his system.

“When did you take the last one?”

“Four hours ago…” Chris mutters into the pillow. At least he took off the sunglasses, but his eyes are screwed up and tears are leaking down his green-tingeing cheeks.

“And it didn’t do shit?”

“Not all that much,” Chris grits out, “and then the plane was just packed, smelled, full of screaming babies and …”

Karl puts the hot cloth on the back of his neck, then reaches for the button at the waist of Chris’ pants. He’s too tired to do more than lie there as Karl tugs his jeans down enough to expose the top of his thigh, since he’s never been comfortable doing what Chris does, which is just jam in the needle right through the fabric.

He doesn’t do this often enough to feel comfortable, jamming a needle hard and fast into Chris’ leg, but Chris has assured him time and again it hurts less than if he tries to go slow and gentle, so he goes on and does it and pushes the plunger, unable to look at Chris’ face even as he hears the hiss of reaction. When the liquid’s all in, he pulls it out and sets the needle aside, rubbing at the site of the injection because there’s blood welling up and _fuck_ but he hates this. There’ll be a bruise there tomorrow, and even though he knows the medicine helps, at least dials down the migraines so Chris at least can get some real sleep and hopefully wake up feeling at least partially human, he’ll probably still be a little confused—a little woozy—for a few hours still.

“You want anything? Water?” He’s afraid to touch Chris, but he wants to, so much, it’s been weeks apart, filming on separate projects and their schedules both were too tight for weekends to visit and damnit, now this, and tomorrow it’s going to be full-fledged P.R. insanity.

Chris blinks open watery eyes and squints up at Karl, scoots back a bit on the bed and swipes at Karl’s hand, the one that’s kind of hovering because he doesn’t know what to do, never does, not when these stupid headaches leave Chris crippled or heaving into the toilet every once in a while despite the fact that he’s got an army of pills in his kit that sometimes do jack-shit and there’s nothing Karl can do except sit there and be fucking _useless._

He swipes again, makes a connection, his skinny fingers clammy and shaky and cold as he wraps tremulous fingers around Karl’s uncertain hand. Chris is skinny as fuck, had to lose weight for this most recent role, and this and the pallor from the headache makes Karl not want to let him out of his sight for at least two or three months while he puts ten or twelve pounds back on the boy. Thank god for junkets—he’ll actually get his wish for a while.

“Just … lie here with me?”

He doesn’t sound certain at all—like Karl’s going to have gone and grown doubts in six weeks or something, like one movie’s going to have changed his mind when they’d talked every night and he’d tried to pour equal parts filth of what he wanted to have Chris do to him and then do in return--not to mention a little thing he guessed he'd call love-- into what he’d typed and spoke into the phone while Chris breathed and responded and one-upped him on the other end of the line.

Still, though, it was no substitute for the body beside you.

“Yeah. Absolutely.” He squeezes—gentle, he warns himself, like he’d’ve once warned his boys when they were babies and would’ve squeezed something too hard—Chris’ fingers before he lets go, then tugs off his sneakers and Chris’ boots, before finding the Do Not Disturb Sign and closing the door as gently as possible. He sends a quick text to Zach, _Chris has a migraine, we’re taking a nap in his room, pls don’t expect us for dinner, see you all in the morning_ , and trusted the man would pass on the news to the rest of the cast so no one disturbs them. The rest of the world might not know, but Zach and Zoe at least are protective and fierce of this whatever-it-is while Karl tried to disentangle himself from New Zealand and all that entailed.

There’s a throw at the end of the bed, and rather than disturb Chris and make him more nauseous, Karl unfurls that. It’ll do for a couple of hours.

When he tests the hot towel he’s wrapped on Chris’ neck, it’s already cooled, and he tosses it onto to floor. Chris doesn’t flinch this time when Karl lays his hand there, feeling as he likes to the velvet fuzz of Chris' hairline at the top of his neck, and the turtling head-cant is a little relaxed, his position a little less fetal as the medication takes some little effect.

“Want a backrub when you wake up?” he murmurs into the wet-cotton smell behind Chris’ ear, as he aligns clad torsos and hips, asses and thighs, knees, feet and ankles into perfect spooning position, one hand cupping Chris’ cheek and the side of his neck, the other slung over his waist and creeping up to make sure of his heart.

It’s still there, right where Chris said—sap that he is, but Karl’s a sap too and yes—he had worried—right where Chris said he would keep it, and despite the headache and all, it’s still beating, deep, strong and even.

“’’D be nice,” Chris slurs, medication already taking effect. “But already got everything that I want.”

He exhales, wet and heavy, goes suddenly slack, and passes totally out in the way that he does when the injection completely kicks in. When he wakes up, he won't remember what happened right before he fell completely asleep—it’s powerful stuff, but Karl went once with Chris to the neurologist and expressed his concern about some of Chris’ waking confusion and what Karl'd called his post-migraine amnesia.

She’d smiled at him as if she knew exactly what he was too scared to ask. “It’s not a mood-altering medication in any way. Anything he says, he actually means, even if he doesn’t recall it. You can trust that he’s actually saying what’s going on in his mind at that moment, even if he forgets it himself.”

Karl closes his eyes on that memory and this one—and knows that it’s true. It’s not a nice dinner or hot I-haven’t-seen-you-in-too-long sex that goes on for hours—but it’s still everything that he wants.  



End file.
